World Retail Congress ’09 FIT project

Sep 10 2010

Acknowl­edged as the most cre­ative by CEO of War­naco Group Joseph R. Gromek among others

Writ­ten by Vik­toriya von Berg

Sam­ple

Based on exten­sive research of our tar­get demo­graphic group who in 2012 will turn 18–21, present eco­nom­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, adopted busi­ness mod­els, socio-economic issues and present eco­log­i­cal state of our envi­ron­ment, our group rec­og­nized the need to develop an inno­v­a­tive busi­ness model to rein­force a con­cept of sus­tain­abil­ity as a future of retail busi­ness operations.

We look at sus­tain­abil­ity at a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive that intro­duces  a shared value both to retail­ers and con­sumers.  Since, the require­ment of ini­tial cap­i­tal is the main con­cern for a busi­nesses to ‘’ go green’’, we devel­oped our store pro­to­type that requires rel­a­tively fewer resources and offers con­sumers more than just a merchandise.

Our portable store, which will be eas­ily assem­bled and dis­as­sem­bled from stan­dard Amer­i­can ship­ping con­tain­ers, will become an inter­ac­tive cen­ter, a com­fort­able place for our young audi­ence to social­ize, to  relax,  to learn and  shop. We visu­al­ize it as a social net­work­ing site so pop­u­lar in today’s youth cul­ture, but away from home computers.

We offer our cus­tomers to par­tic­i­pate in cre­at­ing such a place by tak­ing their part in our sus­tain­able green busi­ness model as con­sumers of our prod­uct and employ­ees at our store.  As our con­sumers become more aware of the ben­e­fits of recy­cling, sus­tain­able store oper­a­tions and make a con­scious choice toward greener prod­ucts we offer, our store, that ini­tially will travel, will  grow into sta­tion­ary cen­ters through­out the USA.…

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Analysis of health market

Sep 09 2010

1st place in col­lege com­pe­ti­tion judged by PR/Marketing pro­fes­sion­als in NY phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry

Excerpt

By Vik­toriya von Berg (Cor­tado)

Prod­uct -”Breath Right” nasal strips 

TARGET MARKET

1st Place: Term Project: Plac­ing a Prod­uct in Inter­na­tional Markets

Based on our research and analy­sis that involved hybrid seg­men­ta­tion tech­nique, we cre­ated psychographic-demographic pro­file of women ages 18–34 who cur­rently live in the USA.  To bet­ter mar­ket Breath Right nose strips, we decided to uti­lize con­cen­trated mar­ket­ing approach and fur­ther nar­rowed our tar­get demo­graphic. Specif­i­cally, we con­ducted a research on the sub­set of women who enjoy healthy lifestyles

Accord­ing to our sec­ondary research, in terms of psychographics/lifestyle seg­men­ta­tion, we iden­ti­fied our tar­get group  as “Inward Alter­na­tive Seek­ers,” who use tech­niques like mas­sage, aro­mather­apy and yoga to relax.  Our pri­mary research backed up our find­ings.  For this project we sur­veyed thirty woman ages 18–34 -  twenty five  respon­dents pointed to a high level of stress  and the impor­tance of its man­age­ment (1)

Data from Mintel Analy­sis con­cern­ing women within the age bracket of 18–34 proves iden­ti­cal con­sumer char­ac­ter­is­tics stat­ing that our tar­get demo­graphic is ”  espe­cially con­cerned with reduc­ing stresses, get­ting into and main­tain­ing a pos­i­tive men­tal state, exer­cis­ing and hav­ing a good night sleep.” (2)

Based on phys­io­graphic analy­sis con­ducted by Mintel Group, “sin­gle women within our tar­get age group  are prone to sleep-disorders, depres­sion and anx­i­ety dis­or­ders.  This attrib­utes to stresses in women who are work­ing to pur­sue higher edu­ca­tion, career and ”find­ing one’s way in life. ‘’As a result, these women are seek­ing spa ser­vices, mas­sage ther­apy and vari­ety of relax­ation or revi­tal­iz­ing tech­niques to relieve these symp­toms.’’ (2)

MARKETING  STRATEGY

Con­sid­er­ing the demo­graphic pro­file of our cus­tomers, the grow­ing usage of the Inter­net, blog­ging, iPhone and other portable elec­tronic devices that play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the lives of our tar­get mar­ket , we devel­oped a unique mar­ket­ing strat­egy that includes Viral Mar­ket­ing, Prod­uct place­ment, Pub­lic Rela­tions and con­ven­tional adver­tis­ing such as Print, Tele­vi­sion and Online Commercials.

To gen­er­ate a social buzz about our newly re-vamped prod­uct, we decided to uti­lize viral mar­ket­ing as an effec­tive and uncon­ven­tional method of adver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tion.  Since our tar­get cus­tomers have a high SNP (social net­work­ing poten­tial) we rec­og­nized the ben­e­fit of reach­ing them via sev­eral social media sites such as Face­book, Twit­ter, MySpace and vari­ety of other social net­work­ing sites.….»We also decided to uti­lize prod­uct place­ment tech­nique using an increas­ingly pop­u­lar online video plat­form such as YouTube..»

In addi­tion, we would like to spend a por­tion of our bud­get on a strong inter­ac­tive web com­po­nent. Our web­site  will include blogs about the prod­uct in addi­tion to relax­ation tips, infor­ma­tion about aro­mather­apy and func­tion­al­ity of  the prod­uct . In addi­tion, cus­tomers will be able  share sto­ries, videos and receive coupons via email. In return,  we will build a com­pre­hen­sive data­base of our con­sumers. Our com­pany will uti­lize the data­base for fur­ther ana­lyt­i­cal research, direct sales and guide our future prod­uct devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, our cus­tomers will  be able to make pur­chases through our web-site via e-store…»

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Fiscal and Monetary Policy of Brazil

Sep 08 2010

Sam­ple writ­ing clip

Analy­sis of Brazil­ian econ­omy 2009

By Vik­toriya von Berg

In order to under­stand cur­rent mon­e­tary and fis­cal poli­cies of Brazil it is impor­tant to look at the dynam­ics of eco­nom­i­cal growth of the coun­try in the past two decades. In  1980 Brazil was endur­ing slow eco­nomic devel­op­ment com­pared to other devel­op­ing nations. This eco­nomic trend was attrib­uted to the large for­eign debt that was con­sid­ered to be the piv­otal part of eco­nomic dif­fi­cul­ties of Brazil. How­ever, by early 1990 it was obvi­ous that this view was uni­lat­eral in the sense that it over­looked the pub­lic sec­tor of the coun­try   which in itself was heav­ily indebted to local and for­eign creditors.

At that time many econ­o­mists came to the unan­i­mous con­sen­sus that it was impor­tant to see how this par­tic­u­lar sec­tor was financed given the fact that it was almost bank­rupt. Since in 1982 the for­eign credit flow was elim­i­nated, and the cost of domes­tic cap­i­tal was extremely costly, the deficit was thought to be financed through infus­ing mon­e­tary sup­ply which in turn sky­rock­eted infla­tion rate to 4,000% (four thou­sand per­cent) at annual rate.  (1) The adop­tion of Fis­cal Sta­bi­liza­tion Pro­gram in 1998 pos­i­tively affected fis­cal posi­tion of Brazil push­ing down country’s debt-to-GDP ratio. (3) Governmental spend­ing increased by 7% dur­ing this period of sta­bi­liza­tion (2) This resulted in the rel­a­tive sta­bil­ity of the coun­try until the global crises swayed the world in 2007 (2)

In 2009 Brazil is an emerging-market econ­omy that com­pared to the other devel­op­ing coun­ties is less affected by the global eco­nomic crises. Nonethe­less it delas with the exter­nal and inter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties that neg­a­tively affect its econ­omy. In a con­text of cur­rent global crises Brazil is in a posi­tion of deal­ing with its rapidly dimin­ish­ing indus­trial pro­duc­tion, espe­cially in the motor sec­tor which is cap­i­tal inten­sive. The avail­abil­ity of the for­eign credit that was abun­dant before global eco­nomic dete­ri­o­ra­tion was dra­mat­i­cally reduced in 2008–2009 and the cost of domes­tic bor­row­ing went up.  (2) This period is also marked by the dwin­dled demand for Brazil­ian export that adds to pre­car­i­ous eco­nomic con­di­tions of the coun­try.  (2)

Fis­cal Policy-Rules Based Fis­cal Management

To effec­tively deal with cur­rent con­di­tions Brazil is in a process of imple­ment­ing fis­cal pol­icy reforms that are indented to recon­sider its indi­rect tax sys­tem that is extremely com­plex. The  reform intends to lift up  tax bur­dens on the motor and con­struc­tion indus­tries as well as on finan­cial sec­tor that includes finan­cial trans­ac­tions. The goal of fis­cal reform is to extend from enter­prises to the labor taxes by elim­i­na­tion of Salário-Educação, a fed­eral levy on pay­rolls and indi­vid­u­als and decreas­ing the social secu­rity con­tri­bu­tions of labor force.(5)

In addi­tion ‚the cur­rent fis­cal pol­icy reform dic­tates  the extended time period for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, increased min­i­mum wage that will con­tribute to the higher spend­ing, social hous­ing pro­grams and cap­i­tal invest­ments in the devel­op­ment of the infra­struc­ture. Since his­tor­i­cally pub­lic debt was the sin­gle most cen­tral point of macro­eco­nomic dilemma in Brazil, the new fis­cal reforms are note­wor­thy in a sense that they con­tributed to the lower pub­lic debt. (2) It is pro­jected that the sur­plus of the pri­mary sec­tor, or in another words debt, will decrease from cur­rent 4.6% to 2.3% as of 2009.

In addi­tion, the newly cre­ated Sov­er­eign Wealth Fund (Fundo Sober­ano do Brasil) was estab­lished in 2009 to pro­tect the econ­omy. Brazil intends to sell trea­sury bonds to finance its fund with the ulti­mate goal of facil­i­tat­ing local firms to extend abroad and engage in inter­na­tional trade. Also, it will facil­i­tate the invest­ment (4) According to Paulo Bernardo, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and bud­get­ing of Brazil, the gov­ern­ment might be well able to increase spend­ing by accu­mu­lat­ing $8.6 bil­lion in its Sov­er­eign Wealth Fund within next year while avoid­ing the increase in its deficit all together. (4)

In addi­tion, Sov­er­eign Wealth Fund might be able to finance the gap in tax losses. Tax breaks were granted this year and many firms choose to post­pone tax pay­ments aggres­sively exploit­ing the law of extend­ing tax pay­ments till next year.(4) As of begin­ning of 2009 Brazil is in posi­tion of los­ing 1. 9 % of tax rev­enue because of slow tax pay­ments, how­ever it claims that it is in a posi­tion of reim­burs­ing these losses using fund’s money in 2010(4)

Over­all, gov­ern­men­tal spend­ing increased from only 7% dur­ing the time of macro­eco­nomic sta­bi­liza­tion in 1994, to 32. 5 % of GDP in 2008.

Mon­e­tary Policy-Inflation Targeting

In order to acti­vate eco­nomic envi­ron­ment of Brazil, Cen­tral Bank of Brazil    reduced com­pul­sory deposit reserve, or in another words ‘’ require­ment for com­mer­cial banks to hold cash reserves equal the frac­tion of their deposits’’ to encour­age lending.

Also, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment granted loans of 4% of national GDP to BNDES (National Devel­op­ment Bank) and other banks that are owned by the government. (2)  This rel­a­tively low per­cent rate allows these banks to engage into lend­ing as well (2). In addi­tion, the author­i­ties allow large finan­cial insti­tu­tions to pur­chase dis­tressed port­fo­lios of smaller banks that have been affected by unfa­vor­able credit envi­ron­ment. (2) The inter­est rates of real ax ante are at his­tor­i­cally low lev­els. (2)

Besides fed­eral loans and mon­e­tary eas­ing, Brazil is advised to let auto­matic sta­bi­liz­ers to take on its pur­pose with­out fur­ther gov­ern­men­tal inter­ven­tion that oth­er­wise might carry a neg­a­tive effect. (2)

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Outsourcing from China

Sep 04 2010

Writ­ing clip

By Vik­toriya von Berg

Out­sourc­ing from China

The People’s Repub­lic of China (PRC) is the largest coun­try in East­ern Asia. The Com­mu­nist regime that assumes a sin­gle party sys­tem is dic­ta­to­r­ial and dom­i­nat­ing, and people’s rights are often nonex­is­tent or sig­nif­i­cantly reduced.  How­ever, Chi­nese gov­ern­ment rec­og­nized the poten­tial of its coun­try on inter­na­tional busi­ness arena and intro­duced com­pre­hen­sive eco­nomic reforms in 1978 that notice­ably pulled out China from poverty. The avail­abil­ity of labor that is pro­por­tional to the large pop­u­la­tion of China, approx­i­mately 1.3 bil­lion, is the major fac­tor that influ­enced growth of the apparel man­u­fac­tur­ers serv­ing Euro­pean and North Amer­i­can clients. The low cost of labor con­sti­tutes the major com­pet­i­tive advan­tage of Chi­nese sup­pli­ers along with improved tech­nol­ogy, attrac­tive lead times, qual­ity con­trol, high pro­duc­tion vol­ume and effi­cient communication.

China– is a per­ma­nent mem­ber of the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil and enjoys its mem­ber­ship within sev­eral mul­ti­lat­eral agree­ments such as WTO (World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion), APEC (Asia Pacific Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion), EAS (East Asia Sum­mit), G-20, and SCO (Shang­hai Coop­er­a­tion Organization.)

World Trade Organization

Tex­tiles and Apparel

The safe­guard on tex­tiles and appar­els com­ing from China to the USA that allowed the USA work­ers and com­pa­nies to respond to increased imports from China has expired in 2008. Quo­tas on tex­tiles and apparel have expired in 2005 (2) Even before these changes took place, roughly by 2000, ‘’Amer­ica became China’s sec­ond largest trade part­ner, sup­ply­ing vari­ety of goods.’’  How­ever, there is a trade imbal­ance between two coun­tries with China enjoy­ing a hefty sur­plus by using high tar­iffs and restric­tions on the USA exports. (3)

Per­ma­nent Nor­mal Trade Relations

PNTR is the acronym used to describe free trade of the USA with any for­eign nation. PNTR replaced the MFN ( the most favored nation) in 1998.  Since China is the mem­ber of the WTO it enjoys Free Trade Agree­ment with the USA.

Asia Pacific Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion (APEC) is com­prised of 21 Pacific Rim coun­tries with an ulti­mate goal of regional trade and invest­ment coop­er­a­tion in order to enhance ‘’eco­nomic growth and pros­per­ity’’ (1) Its mem­bers con­sti­tute approx­i­mately 40% of the pop­u­la­tion around the world, more than half of the world GDP (54%) and lightly less than half of the world trade (44%) (1)

China is also a mem­ber of the G-20 –a forum of the world’s largest economies that play a cru­cial role in today’s global market.

Timely and effi­cient com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Chi­nese sup­pli­ers was the major rea­son that affected my deci­sion to work with one of the fac­to­ries in that part of Asia.

After con­tact­ing dozens of dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers in China, there was one par­tic­u­lar com­pany that responded in a timely and pro­fes­sional man­ner. Dongyang Mohang Imp & Exp Co., Ltd, is a man­u­fac­turer and trad­ing com­pany located at the city of Dongyang Province/State of Zhe­jiang. It oper­ates as a full ser­vice fac­tory with capac­ity of 50,000 per month. There is no min­i­mum order require­ment; how­ever they do charge higher costs for lim­ited orders.  The Dongyang Mohang Imp & Exp Co accepts LC (let­ter of credit) as a pay­ment option. In addi­tion, com­pany has an estab­lished 5 year rela­tion­ship with Tar­get and K-mart. The com­pany spe­cial­izes in baby cloth­ing –dresses, rompers, skirt, baby sleep­ing bags, baby suits, hats chil­dren. Accord­ing to Susan Bao, man­ager, the num­ber of employ­ees totals to about 101. The fac­tory size in sq. meters is 5,000–10,000. The com­pany focuses South­east Asia and West­ern Euro­pean mar­kets. They export approx­i­mately 81%-90%.

There are 5–10 peo­ple in qual­ity con­trol depart­ment. In addi­tion, com­pany works with third par­ties that per­form QA/QC. The deliv­ery time is about 25–30 days from the time of order.

Total Costs

The fac­tory quoted the FOB Shang­hai of 40$ and fac­tory charges $4.05 per item. The ship­ment will be deliv­ered to the Port of New York. There is 9.4 % tar­iff for children’s and adult cot­ton dresses accord­ing to HTS (please refer to the attached excel calculations.)


Cost and Risk Analy­sis CHINA
Direct Costs Amount in US Dollars
Total Prod­uct amount 1000 units
Total Prod­uct Cost $4.05 Per Unit
Freight $40 Per Ship­ping
Tar­iff for cot­ton dresses (children/adult) 9.40% of 4050$ =$380.70
Total Price Calcultions 4.05X1000+40+$380.70=4470.7 USD.
Total Direct Costs _________$4470.7_ Per 1000 Units
Indi­rect Costs — Risk Analysis Level of Risk
Mark the appro­pri­ate Risk Category
High Medium Low
Factory’s Reli­able Delivery X
Factory’s Fast Turn Delivery X
Factory’s Work­ing Conditions X
Eth­i­cal Sourcing X
Total Indi­rect Cost — Risk Rating ___________________LOW_________(High OR Medium OR Low)
Some Exam­ples of Macro Costs — Risk Analysis Level of Risk
Mark the appro­pri­ate Risk Category
High Medium Low
Polit­i­cal Climate X
Local Cul­ture and Customs X
Cor­rup­tion X
Coun­try Infrastructure X
Edu­ca­tion X
Total Indi­rect Cost — Risk Rating Low

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The Great Depression and Great Engineer ( Hoover )

Aug 20 2010

(1929–1939)

”If some unprece­dented calamity should come upon this nation, I would be sac­ri­ficed to the unrea­son­ing dis­ap­point­ment of peo­ple who had expected too much.”(Herbert Hoover)

The Great Depres­sion started in Amer­ica in 1929 and lasted till 1939– the time of the begin­ning of World War II. It evoked a lot of debates, spec­u­la­tions and mis­un­der­stand­ings among politi­cians and econ­o­mists of all lev­els. It is com­mon to believe that Her­bert Hoover was a care­less pres­i­dent who allowed already crum­bling econ­omy of 1929 to go down into deep pit hole pulling along the entire nation. Major­ity of mid­dle class pop­u­la­tion, who are not well rounded in eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics, judge Hoover upon the out­come and they do not seem to be unfair. Paul John­son, in his book ” A his­tory of the Amer­i­can peo­ple ”, rea­son­ably said that ”there is no logic or jus­tice in history-only chronology.”

Her­bert Hoover came to his pres­i­dency in 1929 in a very dif­fi­cult time in Amer­i­can his­tory. The Wall Street crash was sig­nif­i­cant evok­ing a four-week panic. Indexes were down to 224 from 452, GM (Gen­eral Motors) went down from GM 73 to 8; in deed a very deep plunge in a stock mar­ket. How­ever, ”the stock val­ues were right in rela­tions to earn­ings”. Con­sid­er­ing the pre­ced­ing events that took place in Amer­i­can econ­omy from 1920, with its self-adjusted reces­sions and arti­fi­cial infla­tion, the down­turn was inevitable and needed. Fed­eral Reserve Bank Sys­tem was cre­ated to main­tain pros­per­ity nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally by delib­er­ately inflat­ing mon­e­tary sup­ply. ”Credit was expanded from 45.3 bil­lion on June 30, 1921 to $73 bil­lion in July 1929, a 61.8 per­cent expan­sion in eight years,” (John­son, Paul). This process was man­aged by two pow­er­ful fig­ures in the for­ma­tion of the US finan­cial pol­icy domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally: Mon­tage Nor­man– gov­er­nor of the bank of Eng­land and Ben­jamin Strong, gov­er­nor of the New York Fed­eral Reserve Bank. The prices steadily were going up cre­at­ing a demand-supply prob­lem and result­ing in reces­sions that suc­cess­fully self-adjusted.

Another set­back was the prob­lem with tar­iffs. Although Amer­ica had a very tol­er­ant econ­omy in 1920, mean­ing that the work­ers could demand wages and busi­ness­men could work out dif­fer­ent cor­po­rate polices, the high tar­iffs did not allow the healthy com­pe­ti­tion. Among those who ben­e­fited were domes­tic indus­tries and banks. The work­ing pop­u­la­tion, on the other hand, was denied the com­pet­i­tive prices pro­duced by cheap imports. Over­all, the repub­li­can lead­er­ship did not stand up for the eco­nomic free­dom and arti­fi­cial infla­tion along with low inter­est rates led to inevitable eco­nomic down­turn and Wall Street Crash in 1929.

Her­bert Hoover was not respon­si­ble for this vast eco­nomic plunge. ”The Great Depres­sion was caused by mon­e­tary mis­man­age­ment at the Fed­eral Reserve, as was thor­oughly detailed by Mil­ton Fried­man and Anna Schwartz in their bril­liant “A Mon­e­tary His­tory of the United States.”(Wall Street Journal).Contrary, Hoover gen­uinely wanted to help the suf­fo­cat­ing econ­omy of Amer­ica. Orphaned at the age of nine he was a self-made indi­vid­ual who worked his way through the school and Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity to obtain engi­neer­ing degree. He was lib­eral and never expressed any anti-Semitic remarks. His good will spread over the poor third world coun­tries that he wanted to aid. Many politi­cians, includ­ing Roo­sevelt, con­sid­ered him to be a great pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. ‘He is cer­tainly a won­der and I wish we could make him a pres­i­dent of the United States. There could not be a bet­ter one.” (Franklin Roosevelt)

Her­bert Hoover under­stood all the respon­si­bil­ity of being a pres­i­dent in such a hard time in Amer­i­can his­tory. ”The bat­tle to save our eco­nomic machine in motion in this emer­gency takes new forms and requires new tac­tics from time to time. We used such emer­gency pow­ers to win the war; we can use them to fight Depres­sion.” ( H.Hoover, May 1932) Nev­er­the­less, with all his can­did inten­tions did Hoover over­es­ti­mate his own pow­ers? Paul John­son, the author of ”A his­tory of the Amer­i­can Peo­ple” com­pares Hoover to a social engi­neer. The con­cept of social engi­neer­ing is the abil­ity to deter­mine the shape of the soci­ety by manip­u­lat­ing human beings with help of some pow­er­ful force, per­haps a pres­i­dent. The peo­ple, in such case, are com­pared to earth and con­crete, and the great out­comes to such engi­neer­ing won­ders as the Boul­der Canyon Dam. The inter­est­ing fact is that Lenin and Stalin were two lead­ers of social­is­tic regime who became fas­ci­nated by the con­cept of the orga­niz­ing power over nature. As a result, the switch­ing of vast rivers from Arc­tic to other out­lets proved to be a dis­as­ter along with their impos­ing total­i­tar­ian regime over the entire nation that even­tu­ally led to the well-known crash of the Soviet Union in 1990.

Her­bert Hoover was a dic­ta­tor in his own way. His inten­tions to be the first, the inven­tor, the pio­neer resulted in the San Fran­cisco Bay Bridge, the Los Ange­les Aque­duct and the Hoover Dam. ” More major works were started in the Hoover’s 4 years than in pre­ced­ing 30 years of Amer­i­can his­tory.” (John­son, Paul). H. Hoover took the approach of the great inven­tor in sav­ing Amer­i­can econ­omy as well. He wrote: ” No pres­i­dent before has ever believed there was a gov­ern­ment respon­si­bil­ity on such cases…there we had to pio­neer the field.” And he did what he con­sid­ered to be a new approach of the inter­ven­tion­ist gov­ern­ment: ”He resumed credit infla­tion, adding to the Fed­eral Reserve almost $300 mil­lion of credit in the last week of Octo­ber 1929 alone.” Instead of allow­ing wages nat­u­rally drop he decided to keep them high and even held sev­eral con­fer­ences tak­ing promises from the cor­po­rate world to main­tain the wages high and even to pay more when­ever pos­si­ble. This did not have a pos­i­tive impact on those who did not have any wages at all, con­sid­er­ing ris­ing unemployment.

Besides keep­ing wages high Hoover did not con­sider inter­est rates that were too low. He cer­tainly could allow the inter­est rates to go up, which would be the right eco­nom­i­cal deci­sion, but he ignored it. In addi­tion H. Hoover did not veto the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 about tar­iffs, which had a neg­a­tive impact nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally. ”His poli­cies were far from per­fect, espe­cially on trade,” wrote Mil­ton Fried­man and Anna Schwartz in their “A Mon­e­tary His­tory of the United States.( Wall Street Journal)

With all eco­nom­i­cal dis­as­ter of the Great Depression–education suf­fered enor­mously. Almost 1,500 higher edu­ca­tion uni­ver­si­ties went bank­rupt. ”Uni­ver­sity enroll­ment fell, for the first time in Amer­i­can his­tory, by a quarter-million. ” Look­ing at the con­se­quences of the Great Depres­sion on edu­ca­tion John Stein­beck said, ”When peo­ple are broke the first thing they give up is books.”

Her­bert Hoover fore­shad­owed his future by say­ing: ”If some unprece­dented calamity should come upon this nation, I would be sac­ri­ficed to the unrea­son­ing dis­ap­point­ment of peo­ple who had expected too much.” The calamity was there, before the Hoover took over his pres­i­dency, and it turned into dis­as­ter dur­ing four years of him being a pres­i­dent of the United States. Was Her­bert Hoover ”sac­ri­ficed” to the ”unrea­son­ing dis­ap­point­ment ” of peo­ple with unrea­son­able expec­ta­tions? Were the expec­ta­tions of an Amer­i­can nation so unrea­son­able? The spec­u­la­tors are still not sure about the exact answer. Paul John­son rightly said in his book: ”There is no logic and jus­tice in history-only chronology.”

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Solitude

Aug 19 2010


Oh, closer to the Absolute,
In out­lines of moun­tains indigo sky is slowly melt­ing into
Shad­ows,
Lean­ing away from set­ting sun and over­cast­ing darken mead­ows,
The End and ulti­mate Begin­ning, the Sham­bala of Soul
Where Yin and Yang cre­ate a ver­i­ta­ble Mean­ing…..
Enchanted Mecca of the Moon, tran­quil­ity rein­car­na­tion,
where stars engrav­ing con­stel­la­tions
Cre­ate a crys­tal clear path for tired soul to find its rest..
There lived a Solitude…for years
She hid in creeks and slept in Shad­ows
With word­less stars on silent nights
With clover bed at moon­lit mead­ows
Alone…for many years..alone
Sur­rounded by peace­ful Bliss
No one to love…No one to miss…

4 responses so far

A bird without wings

Jul 27 2010


The wing­less bird
is often at my win­dow
it squirms at plum­met
of the rain or blindly blinks at moon
it does not chirp and ask me no per­mis­sion
to peck on win­dow of my room at mid­night or at noon

It has no shadow and its feathers’re miss­ing
the gloss of dew and star­dust of the night
It turns to Raven –when I read it lis­tens
it turns to glit­tered quill in moon­light when I write

But inter­minably it comes when day’s in blos­som
it’s miss­ing wings are piti­ful regret
Pre­sid­ing over Salvador’s ”supreme ambi­tion”
it squints at books I start to write but soon forget…

Intel­li­gence with­out ambi­tion is a bird with­out wings
Sal­vador Dali

No responses yet

You said you can’t forget

Jul 27 2010

.….Leave the past to its shad­ows
Death claims life but not love
Often dust of burnt mead­ows
Paired with rain from above
Bears the fruits and the flow­ers
New Eden for lost lovers.….….

One response so far

Oh, Masters of the written word!

Jun 10 2010

who claim poor Yorick being for­got­ten
and dusted verse of dead Shake­speare!
The rusted sword that cuts your tongue!
The dirt of blab­ber fill­ing shal­low
The depth of your pro­found thought!

You scream I am Witch of dark­ened ages!
And make the fire with the pages
That praises me! You bare sages!
Me! Who drank old gin with drunken Poe?
Who filled the skull with blood of wine
for Byron play­ing in his cas­tle?
Invited to soirees and rested on clover
Bed with Steven­son observ­ing ‘’… child, far, far away,
And in another gar­den, play…’’ ?

I am con­demned to burn in flames
Sus­tained by you with flap­ping pages
of poems read as short­ened prose!
The mas­ter­pieces of new ages
Stored in the dusted schools of yours!
The instru­ments of inqui­si­tion to kill me more~!

I am The Rhyme!
I will sur­vive the burn­ing blaze
Of foolest pages yet reced­ing!
The light of old will lit they way
To newest king­dom
Of my reign!
And not sus­tained thy flames will wane!

One response so far

Paramours

Jun 10 2010


Book is open, eyes closed
Orange clouds call thun­der
Salty breeze flap­ping pages
under peach tinted dust,

Dark­ened dunes lonely cas­tles
cast­ing saf­fron on coast­line
Ocean–amber indigo
melt­ing last golden rays…

Draped in the Suede of first shad­ows
Night pulls black sleeve of cloak,
Weaved in dia­monds and rubies
lace of mask over face

cast­ing moon shot reflec­tion
in the glis­ten­ing mir­ror…..
Split in half glassy king­dom
War on top –peace beneath

play­ing won­drous drama
Splashed in blue sward of light­ning
Thun­der cracks abyss open
strik­ing torches of gold

rolling waves ever mighty
Mephistophilus plays Wag­ner
sweep­ing moon with the star­dust
wind is wail­ing above
Brig­an­tine har­bored under.…

Rags of red silky dresses
Drapes of sails flaw­ing down
Play is over, seats empty
actors fired. Alas!

Salvador’s melt­ing watches
Kings of noon­tide are bro­ken
Mast—lit stage holds unspo­ken
Final, short epi­logue
of what once was a drama….
Sleep­less nights twined in passion!

Para­mours’ time­less play­wright
Moon– is hid­ing in shad­ows
Prima donna lays pas­tel
Wreath of lilies –white tears

No responses yet

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